We’re fixing an unintentional deploy time change, and in doing so making the Miner a bit easier to react to once again. Additionally, it’s become clear that the Miner is quite strong and could do with being toned down a notch.

Reasoning: This update was known for a while as the “payfecta nerf” update, where the ice wizard, princess, and miner were all nerfed. They fixed the unintentional deploy time bug as promised, an delivered a small nerf to him since a small portion of the community claimed he was overpowered.

Overall, the miner does not have a vicious or gracious past of balance changes, and is generally considered a balanced legendary card.

2 – Popular Miner Decks & Subtypes

The miner best fits into control, and a very specific brand of siege and beatdown decks since it is very fast and cheap, but also weak. Based on this, there won’t be very many siege / beatdown decks that heavily incorporate the miner in most cases, aside from lava hound beatdown.

– Miner Cycle / Miner Chip Decks: Most of these decks focus on using the miner along with several low elixir-cost troops, so that the user can cycle back to the miner to chip damage off of the tower.

– Lavahound Decks: In these decks, the miner’s job is almost always to tank hits for the lava pups. This combo can be very hard to break if the opponent has little air defense, and usually can result in a tower taken in one push, if executed perfectly.

– Zap Bait Decks – The miner’s role in these decks is to tank hits for a mass of low health units, such as skeleton armies, minion hordes, goblins/barrels, and graveyards.

– Three Musketeer Decks: The miner’s job is to tank one of the tower’s hits for a musketeer in a split push, to overwhelm the opponent.

3 – Strategies with the Miner – Offense & Defense

Offense:

About 60% of the time, the miner will be sent to one of the four sides of the tower to either tank for support troops / a counter-push, or to chip damage. This is typically the most effective way to use him, with his high hitpoints and below medium single targeting damage, so that it can tank for fast units with low HP and high damage.

~30% of the time the miner will be sent in to kill weak troops such as princesses, or even support troops on the back line such as musketeers, ice wizards, etc.

Chipping off the tower with something else tanking – this is not usually recommended as the miner is not very hard to kill, but if you need extra damage, you can always throw him right at the tower for moderate damage, while your main tank takes all of the damage.

Finally, this is not the most practical strategy, but a very effective one undoubtedly. Using the miner to destroy / tank shots from buildings (inferno tower) for a main tank like a giant isn’t too uncommon. If timed and positioned right, you can get insane value from the miner, making your entire push more effective.

The miner’s role on defense is pretty straightforward, as he can almost take the place of a knight.

Killing mini tanks – the miner has a moderate DPS and is not all too bad at killing things like hogs, Valkyries, knights, and more when needed.

Tank and splank OJ’s video– A strategy where you use the miner to distract a splash damaging unit, and then using lower HP swarms to kill them from the other side.

Kiting units: In desperate situations, the miner can kite most troops to the other side if positioned correctly, in order to save your tower from taking too much damage.

Taking sparky shots: Again, a very desperate scenario, but the miner can take a sparky shot, forcing her to take 5 more seconds to reload. Not typically a recommended strategy.

4 – Regular & Double Elixir – Playstyles

The miner is generally used in control playstyles, which usually does well in both regular and double elixir because of the cheap & quick cycling troops usually involved.

Regular Elixir: You want to be more conservative with your elixir, since making too big of a mistake (such as expending too much elixir on a bad push) can definitely cost you a tower worst case. In control decks, this is hard to recover from.

Double Elixir: Defense should come naturally in most decks, focus on minimizing damage done to your towers as much as possible, and then using leftover defensive troops as a counterpush, usually tanked for by the miner.

5 – Ladder vs Tournaments

The miner is naturally much better in tournaments, with the increased battle & overtime length. This allows for the miner to do so much more damage over time, since the miner can be very hard to prevent from chipping at least little amounts of damage.

6 – Synergies with the Miner

Skeletons, goblins, spear goblins, skeleton army, minions, minion horde – Fast swarm troops work well with the miner, since he tanks for them while they hope to get to the tower and do big damage.

The best way to play this combo is to first bait out the enemies spells and splash units, so that they have a hard time taking care of the support.

Mega minion, bowler, knight, valkyrie, other primarily defensive units – Just before these units cross the bridge, drop your miner on their tower so that it will tank for these troops, giving you even more value from them.

Ice spirit, ice wizard – While the tower is targeting the miner, these will slow it down while doing damage, allowing him to get in even more chip damage if not dealt with properly

Fireball, lightning, rocket, tornado, arrows, log – The miner can be great at forcing your opponents to use defensive cards.

You can use the miner to chip tower damage, AND have a spell do damage to the tower too, which can do a lot of damage for a small (typically) elixir disadvantage.

Be careful not to put yourself in too bad of an elixir disadvantage!

3 Musketeers – The miner is a great and very versatile mini tank, and as a result it can be turned into a quick tank for either side of your split push.

An amazing strategy for split pushes, normally overwhelming the enemy.

Graveyard & Goblin Barrel – The miner will tank for the weaker goblins & skeletons so that they can do a lot of damage to the enemy’s tower.

The best counters to the miner are ones that are able to dish out damage to quickly kill it, even better if they are not instantly zappable.

In my opinion, the absolute best counter to the miner, with the recent poison nerf, are guards, since no spell can get rid of them in one hit, and at tournament levels the miner takes three hits to kill each guard.

The best strategy for countering the miner is to drop the troop behind the tower before he pops up, if you know that he is coming. This way, the unit will have time to walk to the miner. Mini tanks such as valkyries, knights, mini pekkas, lumberjacks, and princes are also very effective at countering him. Dropping an ice spirit is insanely helpful at preventing the miner from hitting your tower, since it forces him to retarget if the other troop gets close enough.

The bowler, fireball, and the tornado can force the opponent’s miner to activate the king’s tower in the right circumstances, which will usually give you a major advantage over the opponent.

Troops that are BAD at countering the miner: Fire Spirits (solely because they’re better used against swarms), Spear Goblins, Graveyard

9 – Additional Tips & Fun Facts

In this section, I’ll add a few fun facts, and will puts answers to good questions/notes in the comments here.

The only spell capable of completely killing a miner, at tournament levels is a rocket.

The miner is the only unit that can be placed anywhere in the arena, since the goblin barrel is technically a spell

Unless the opponent counters, the miner is usually the best counter to the elixir pump, which is why it probably had higher use rates before the recent elixir pump nerf

The miner was added to the game on May 3rd, 2016

Zap + Miner can kill several crucial enemy support troops such as witches, wizards, and musketeers on their side of the map, at tournament levels!

When using your miner to destroy an elixir collector, the first hit destroys two elixir, the second hit removes another elixir, third hit removes another elixir, fourth hit removes one, the fifth takes two away, and the sixth one finally destroys it.

The miner will oneshot goblins if they are one level lower

When attacking the tower, the miner will not be as close, so if something forces the tower to retarget, it will aim for skeletons/goblins instead. This is not the case with units like minions, mega minions, guards, or anything ranged.

When playing miner, try to switch up where you safely place it around the tower, so that the opponent has a much harder time countering it.

This secret miner placement is useful when you see an opponent with an elixir pump right next to their king’s tower. This can also be called the “miner gamble spot”, since it is very risky. These are the spots from both angles. WARNING: If the opponent doesn’t counter, your miner will activate the king’s tower.

10 – Conclusion

That’s the end of this strategy post, I hope this was very helpful for all players with the miner, new or experienced! This guide took me several hours, so all feedback and criticism (keep it constructive please) is accepted!

If there is anything else you would like to see in this post, or any more fun facts you would like added, let me know in the comments and I’ll add them if they are relevant.